Cao, Junyi (fl. 1644). Tianxia jiubian fenyie renji lucheng quantu. [Map of the World with China at its Center]. Nanjing: 1644.

CAO, Junyi (fl. 1644).

Tianxia jiubian fenyie renji lucheng quantu. [A comprehensive map of the kingdom of China and neighbouring countries.]

Xylographic world map, printed on native paper comprising two sheets, joined horizontally along the central fold.

Nanjing: beginning of summer in the 17th year of the reign of Emperor Chongzhen [i.e. 1644].

(1244 x 1253mm [49" x 49 3/8"] image; 1295 x 1277mm [51" x 50 1/4"] sheet; 1530 x 1530mm [60 1/4" x 60 1/4"] framed).

Previously folded, tipped to backing board and framed. (25mm circular patch upper left just touching one character, a few marginal stains and some intermittent tiny wormholes, generally very fresh and clean.)

The Most Important Map of China to come to the Market in 50 years.

ONE OF ONLY THREE KNOWN COPIES OF THE LAST MING DYNASTY WORLD MAP. This map, essentially an administrative overview of China, placing the kingdom within a global context, appeared at the end of the Ming dynasty. In 1644, the Manchus invaded China from the north, taking Beijing that year. The Ming dynasty held out in in their second capital, Nanjing, until 1645, before falling. The Emperor Chongzhen, battling to survive and prop up his dynasty, would have required a map showing not only the geography of the former Ming dynasty dominions, but also China's relationship with the rest of the world. As such, Ming China is placed centrally upon the map, with the rest of world forced to the margins and consequently distorted. In doing so, the map is a powerful combination of traditional Chinese cartography that can be traced back before contact with the western Jesuit missionaries, while simultaneously displaying the very Western attributes directly related to the map publishing activities of Matteo Ricci and others. Various features, such as the source of the Yellow River depicted in a gourd shape, the Great Wall shown with great prominence in the upper part, and the rivers, lakes and oceans shown with corrugation, are all part of the traditional cartographic form of China. As such, this map shows a clear lineage from Yu Shi's Gujin xingsheng zhi tu [Map of advantageous terrain, past and present; now in Seville], published in 1555, some 30 years before the arrival of the first Western missionaries. (See plate 1 in History of Cartography, vol. 2.2.)

In 1593, Liang Chou published Qiankun wanguo quantu gujin renwu shiji [A comprehensive map (delineating) heaven and earth and the myriad countries (of the world) and modern human affairs], which was the first Chinese map to incorporate Western cartographic knowledge. In this map, China is represented as a central continent surrounded by foreign lands represented as islands. It is clear that this map owes a debt to Ricci and his map printed in China in 1584 (now lost), for it mentions him by name. Cao's map, however, published some 50 years later, although similarly having a large central China, no longer represents foreign lands as islands, but rather as continents in a manner reminiscent of Matteo Ricci's great world map on six panels (Beijing, 1602). Moreover, the British Isles and western Europe in particular, bear a strong resemblance to a world map contemporaneously published by the Jesuit Francesco Sanbasi in Canton, c.1648. So although the continents are distorted, their representation thus is a great step forward in cartographic accuracy. The rivers and coastlines are not true to reality, since the map is not drawn on a grid scale, but what makes this map exceptional is that IT IS THE FIRST CHINESE MAP TO USE LINES OF LONGITUDE AND LATITUDE.

This pioneering hybrid of Chinese and Western mapping techniques was to serve as an accurate template for at least another century. In about 1743, a large Chinese wall map appeared (British Library 15406.a.28), itself a cartographic hybrid, that prized ‘Liang’s old map’ (i.e. of 1593) quoting its population figures, as well as ‘Cao’s old map’, using the latter’s distances. Although this wall map reverted to depicting foreign lands as islands surrounding China, the cartographer obviously realized that Cao’s map was by far more accurate. ONLY TWO OTHER COPIES OF CAO’S MAP CAN BE TRACED: British Library 60875[11] and National Library of China, Beijing.

L. Bagrow. ‘The cartography of Asian peoples’ in History of cartography, revised and enlarged by R.A. Skelton. Pp. 197-211. London: C.A. Watts & Co., 1964; T.N. Foss. ‘A Western interpretation of China: Jesuit cartography’ in East meets West; The Jesuits in China, 1582-1773. Pp. 209-251. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988; [Y. Jones, H. Nelson & H. Wallis.] Chinese & Japanese Maps.[Exhibition catalogue.] London: British Museum, 1974; H. Nelson. ‘Chinese maps: an exhibition at the British Library’ in The China Quarterly. London: April-May 1974. Pp. 357-362; F.C. Hsia. ‘Observational fortunes’. Sojourners in a strange land: Jesuits and their scientific missions in late imperial China. Pp. 110-128. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009; L. Hostetler. Mapping territory; Qing colonial enterprise ethnography and cartography in early modern China. Pp. 51-80. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001; R.J. Smith. Chinese maps; images of ‘All Under Heaven’. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996; R.J. Smith. Mapping China and managing the World; Culture, Cartography and Cosmology in late Imperial times. London: Routledge, 2013. L. Xiaocong. A Descriptive catalogue of pre-1900 Chinese maps seen in Europe. Beijing: Guoji wenhua, 1996. Pp. 162-163. 1996; C.D.K. Yee. ‘Traditional Chinese cartography and the myth of Westernization’ in Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies. Vol. 2.2 of The History of Cartography, eds. J. B. Harley and David Woodward, 170-202. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994; Q. Zhang. Making the New World their Own; Chinese encounters with Jesuit science in the age of discovery. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

-----------------

John Rennie Short description:

"Junyi Cao’s 1644 world map is of major historical importance. It was produced at a time of rapid development in printing and cartographic production in China. It embodies two very different mapmaking traditions and it was published just as the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) was about to fall and to be replaced by the Qing Dynasty.

This map was probably printed by publishers for sale to the public. This in itself is an interesting feature of the map. For long periods in Chinese history, ordinary citizens were not allowed to have maps, they were the prerogative of the government. Maps were produced very largely by the government for the government. The Chinese central authorities produced maps for military, political and administrative purposes. Careful mapping and cartographic knowledge were seen as important elements of political power and military intelligence. However private publishing took off in the late Ming as a product of growing wealth and changes in print technology. There are reports of private publishing of newspapers in Beijing in 1538 and by 1638, movable type printing was replacing woodblock, making it easier and cheaper to publish books and maps for a wider market. This map was printed at this period of a growing market of private printers and a widening circle of readers and subscribers.

There was growing interest in geographical writings and travel writing. Xu Xiake (1587-1641) published his Travel Diaries as a listing of geographical knowledge while Yuan Hongdao (1568-1610) described his travels, like our contemporary writers, as much an inner journey of increasing self-knowledge as well as a physical journey of exploration. There was a vibrant commercial press and growing market for geographical essays and maps in the late Ming. Maps were produced in a variety of different forms, including official gazetteers, privately produced guidebooks and single broadsheets. Different types of maps were produced, including national maps and city maps, in commercial printing ventures. It was an international nexus with a flow of cartographic texts between Ming China, Japan Korea and Europe.

The Junyi Cao map is a very important example of this burgeoning map publication in the late Ming dynasty.

The Merging of Two Traditions: 1. Chinese Cartography: China has a long history of mapmaking. One of the earliest maps, discovered in a tomb in Hebei, dates from around 400 BCE. Maps inked onto wooden boards have been dated as early as 200 BCE. Maps were also made on paper, wood, silk and stone. They were sophisticated, drawn to scale and used abstract symbols. The scholar Pei Xiu (224–271) was responsible for many of the principles of Chinese mapmaking. He identified scale, location, distance, elevation, and gradient as important considerations when making maps. Pei Xiu outlined the need for careful measurement and attention to geographic detail in mapmaking. A later mapmaker, Jai Dan (730 805), is credited with using a grid in constructing maps, and subsequent Chinese maps until around 1600 are often characterized by grid mapping. During the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties, local governments drew up and submitted maps to the central authorities on a regular three- or five-year basis. Since there were almost 300 local governments, a large number of maps were produced over the years, and a sophisticated cartography was created, many in the form of sophisticated landscape paintings with a subtle use of shifting perspectives.

An important figure in Chinese cartography is Zhu Siben (1273–1335). In the wake of the Mongol unification of Asia, a new shared geographic knowledge now included Muslim, Persian and Arab geographical works and maps. He drew upon this rich source to produce a large map of China around 1315 that was to form the basis of cartographic representation of the country for centuries. The map was revised by Yu Shi and published in 1555. It incorporates the information from the voyages of Zheng He who, between 1405 and 1433, led seven expeditions to the Pacific and Indian Oceans, greatly expanding the empire’s geographical knowledge. Luo Hongxian (1504-1564) also published an atlas in 1561 (later editions in 1566 and 1579) based on Siben.

Junyi Cao’s map builds on this world map tradition of Siben-Yu Shi-Luo Hongxian with the corrugated depiction of rivers lakes and oceans, the highlighted nature of the Great Wall and the nature of the text. Traditional Chinese maps contain substantial text. The text in this map includes the names, population and primary commodities of provinces taken from the General Gazetteer of the Ming, a geographical record of the empire first commissioned in the early Ming. The text also contains information on China’s relations with neighboring countries. It describes the symbolic submission of the tributary states through a depiction of the difficulty that representatives of the vassal states had to make to come to China. The text reinforces the centrality of China to a world order. Even the title "Tianxia jiubian fenyie renji lucheng quantu" employs the term Tianxia which is an old word for the empire as a geographical space appointed to the Emperor. It also has a deeper meaning, dating from the early Han Dynasty, that means civilization and order. This is a world map with China at its center, its geographical pivot and as the hearth of civilization.

The Junyi Cao map represents a world centered around China but with more awareness of wider world. Information from the He voyages, growing international trade and the growing exchange of maps had extended, albeit slightly, the traditionally insular Chinese world view. It depicts, around the edges, Europe, the Mediterranean and the Americas. North America and South America are shown separately.

2. The Jesuit Contribution: The arrival of the Jesuit missionary, Matteo Ricci, marked a significant development in Chinese cartography. Matteo Ricci (1552 1610) was born in Macerata, Italy on October 6, 1552. He joined the Jesuit order when he was only 19, and 11 years later he was posted to the mission station in the Portuguese province of Macao. He eventually gained permission to enter China in 1582, and by 1601 he had reached the imperial capital of Beijing. A zealous missionary eager to make Catholic converts, it was rumored that he converted 2,000 high-ranking Chinese officials. Ricci was able to exert such an influence because he was sensitive to local traditions and respectful of Chinese culture. He took the trouble to learn Chinese and adopted some of the clothes and language of a traditional Chinese scholar. He was engaged in an “enterprise of seduction” to win over the elite and to influence the Emperor. A transcultural intellectual, Ricci was part of a larger group of Christian scholars, including Michael Boym, Jean-Baptiste Regis, Ferdinand Verbiest and others, who played an important role in mapping the Chinese empire. Ricci and his colleagues were transmission points between Chinese and western cartography. They demonstrated to the Chinese the principles of latitude and longitude and introduced them to a less Sinocentric view of the world. And in turn they were introduced to the sophisticated range of Chinese cartography. The resultant Sino-Jesuit maps made their way from China into West by providing a more accurate picture of Asia for western mapmakers.

Matteo Ricci’s 1602 world map:

Ricci produced a number of world maps. These include a 1584 woodblock print, a 1596 map carved on stone that was revised in 1600 and a 1602 map that was an enlarged and revised version of the earlier 1584 map. Ricci's maps introduced the Chinese to latitude and longitude, to the nature of world geography and a less Sino centric view of the world. Ricci’s map was entitled Map of myriad countries of the earth. The very title decentered China.

Junyi Cao’s map is the first Chinese map to employ the notation of latitude and longitude. It is the first time this appears on a purely Chinese map rather than the Sino-Jesuit mas of decades earlier. It also hints at Ricci's earlier world map with its depiction of North and South America.

The Junyi Cao map is of special interest because it represents a brief flowering of latitude and longitude on a Chinese map. The later Qing dynasty employed Jesuit cartographers such as Erhernberg Xavier Fridelli, Pierre Jartoux and Jean Baptiste to help local scholars, officials and functionaries survey the vast territory and map the empire. There was a new territorial need; from 1660 to 1770 the Qing doubled the amount of land under their direct control. The Qing followed a similar path as the French and Russians. In mapping its expanding empire, the Qing employed the same map language as its competitors. International experts were employed by all the expanding imperial powers of the day. The mapping was less simply a unique Sino-Jesuit interaction and more the employment of international experts by just one of many expanding powers eager to use cutting edge technology to visualize, represent and embody their power. The adoption of early modern mapping techniques in France, Qing China and Muscovy were a global phenomenon and Chinese mapping was part of a more universal cartographic tradition.

But the Jesuit influence faded. The waning of Jesuit influence was especially marked in world maps. This new cartography displaced China from the center of the world, it implied the earth was spherical whereas traditional Chinese belief envisioned it as square and flat. The new cartography undermined the long held knowledge system, and tended to separate maps out from text. and ultimately threatened Chinese self-confidence of their place in the world. The resistance ultimately came from a centuries old tradition of envisioning China as the center of the world, Its centrality reinforced in map form and accompanying text. The Jesuit contribution was resisted because it decentered China from its pivotal position. By the nineteenth century latitude and longitude were rare in Chinese world maps. The Cao map represented a brief period when the Enlightenment cartographic project of science and careful measurement, albeit brought by Catholic Jesuits, had briefly illuminated Chinese cartography. The map is like a brief candle flame that briefly illuminated Chinese cartography brightly before being soon extinguished.

From the late 18th to the19th centuries, the majority of Chinese mapmakers ignored these earlier influences. The voyages of Zheng He were forgotten, and the Jesuits eventually banished from the country. China slid into a more parochial posture, trying to ignore the larger world outside its immediate sphere of influence, and world maps were made that focused on China’s centrality and preeminence.

The Junyi Cao map is a unique document that embodies the tension of the cartographic exchange between two traditions at a rare moment that disturbed the insularity of the Chinese worldview.

Decline of A Dynasty:

The Cao map is both a first and a last. It is the first Chinese map to employ latitude and longitude and it is the last world map produced in the Ming era (1368-1644). Under the Ming, the population of China would double, and more trade and cultural exchange took place with the West. Spanish and Portuguese traders reached the coast during their reign. It was an era when at times arts and culture flourished. An ambitious canal system was constructed, and the imperial capital moved in 1421 from Nanking to Beijing. There was vigorous trade of porcelain and silver with Europe, Japan and SouthEast Asia. In late Ming Christians were allowed to enter the country. At its end, however, the Ming faced mounting problems. On the international front, there were growing threats from strengthening Mongol power in the north, Japanese piracy along the coasts and later a Japanese invasion of Korea. Internal dissent was caused by food shortages. In 1627, rebellion broke out in the wake of devastating crop failures. An epidemic in 1642, in the wake of starvation, killed possibly as much as maybe 50 percent of the population. Expensive military campaigns, peasants uprisings, growing hunger and devastating epidemics signaled the end of the once mighty empire, Rebels took control over the capital in 1644 and the last Ming emperor hung himself on a tree in a garde  in the Forbidden City. Sensing an opportunity, the Manchu in the north invaded and established a new dynasty, the Qing. There was some Ming resistance in the south to Manchu rule, but by 1652 most of the country was under Qing control who then embarked on ambitious imperial expansion extending their rule west into Tibet , Xingang and Mongolia and creating new tributary states in Nepal, Burma, Siam, Laos and Vietnam. By the middle of the nineteenth century the expansion ceased, China came under the control of outside powers and the dynasty ended in 1911.

The Great Wall of China, shown as such an important feature of the Cao map, provided no real defenses from the Manchu from beyond the wall. The Junyi Cao map is the very last cartographic legacy of the Ming, printed as the empire was falling apart. Its legacy continued for some time but by 1800 its novel depiction of the world was lost. It became a dim memory. It represented a brief period in a forgotten cartographic exchange and the last map of a defeated dynasty.

The Junyi Cao map is of major historical significance. With only two other known copies, it is a cartographic treasure that represents a unique historical exchange and embodies one of the global encounters that made the modern world."